http://m.fortmcmurraytoday.com/article.aspx?a=2860725
Author calls oilsands force for ‘national unity’
CAROL CHRISTIAN
"I love you."
It was with those three simple words that outspoken author Ezra Levant began his address Tuesday to a crowded luncheon jointly hosted by the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce and the Alberta Enterprise Group.
Levant, Calgary lawyer and former publisher of the Western Standard news magazine, was in town making the case for Alberta's oilsands which he discusses in his latest book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oilsands.
"You make me so proud to be a Canadian," he continued. "I love your industry. I love your work ethic. I love your charity. I love your respect for environmental stewardship. I love your innovation. I love your technology. I love your gentleness. I love how well you treat people. .... I love how you respect human rights."
At one point, he proclaimed "you are a force for national unity" because of the far-reaching national economic benefits of the oilsands.
He said it makes him "mad and pained and sad and outraged" to hear the insults and slanders "thrown at this town and at you."
Noting how critics like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call it dirty oil even as she defends it, others call those here climate criminals.
"That's not just untrue, it's not just a lie .... but it's the opposite of the truth and those criticisms are immoral."
Levant came up with the idea for Ethical Oil while on a book tour promoting his last book Shakedown at a writer's festival in Ottawa. He was asked to participate in a discussion going on elsewhere in the building about the oilsands. His only prerequisite was that he was from Alberta.
He recalled seeing photos in the room of open pit mines which Levant calls "oilsands pornography because it's designed to be so shocking.
While he did his best to debate the issue of oilsands, he admitted his arguments weren't that good and those "well intentioned idealists" in the audience who had heard so many foul things about the oilsands, weren't asking grownup questions about if not the oilsands, then what?
Leaving with his speaking notes, Levant said he realized he had another book "and the phrase Ethical Oil sort of popped into my head, so I thought what makes us different?"
He told his audience Tuesday that if Fort McMurray produced one barrel of oil less, the world would be a less ethical place.
In his book, he doesn't compare Alberta oil production and development with other countries on the usual basis of numbers and dollars per se; it's more along the lines of what he calls four liberal values: environmental protection, human rights, economic justice and peace.
Because Alberta and Canada excel at those values more than any other oil producer in the world, "Alberta oil, Canadian oil is the most ethical oil in the world and indeed, we are the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry."
Some may say that's the wrong debate, noted Levant, saying instead their question is not whether the oilsands are better than OPEC, but are the oilsands better than some fantasy fuel of the future that hasn't been invented yet — a science fiction fuel like Star Trek's dilithium crystals or as per Avatar, unobtainium.
Debating oilsands versus Utopia is not a morally serious discussion, but one more suitable for a science fiction fan club.
Until that fantasy fuel is invented, that 1.4 million barrels from Canada sells to the U.S. displaces oil from other real countries, not science fiction countries, like Saudi Arabia, which until the oilsands came on stream, was the No. 1 source for fuel for the United States. If environmental activists and foreign lobbyists have their way and turn off the oilsands "do you think that for one second, 300 million Americans would not drive their cars? Do you think they would simply stop fuelling up their cars or maybe go to the gas pump and fuel it up with windmills or something?
"No one would be happier than the Saudi ambassador who would be there in a flash to make up their lost market share. And if you think America is thirsty for oil,well let me introduce you to China, India, Brazil and the rest of the developing world."
He noted that last year, for the first time ever, more cars were sold in China — 15.6 million — than in the United States.
If the oil stopped coming from the oilsands, the "world butchers" would make up that supply.
"And that's the morally serious comparison."
Oil does not come from neutral European countries like Switzerland, but the "world's bastards ... Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the world's dictators and bullies and terrorists.
"We are the only western Liberal democracy on that list," said Levant, referring to the remainder as the world's rogues.
"We Canadians invented peacekeeping. Saudi Arabia invented 9-11."
Describing Alberta oil as "conflict-free peace oil," he added that Canadian oil is also blood free from any form of genocide unlike up-and-coming oil producer, Sudan. Following the murder of 300,000 people of Darfur, Levant calculated 6.5 millilitres of blood in every barrel; the total derived from taking into account the number of victims and the amount blood in the average human body, and dividing that into the number of barrels exported from Sudan during the same period of time.
"So don't call oilsands oil blood oil. Don't you call us dirty oil. Don't you call us criminal oil because there really is blood oil ... or nuclear bombed oil by Iran or misogynistic terrorist dictatorship oil from Saudi Arabia. It is an unethical thing to shut down the oilsands because every barrel not from here is a barrel from the butchers."
With oils being categorized by different carbon contents, Levant pointed out that oils with a higher carbon footprint than oil from the oilsands are used in the U.S. In fact, he pointed out, there is an oil so heavy it has its own name: California heavy.
As California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, wags her finger at Alberta saying she doesn't want oil from the oilsands because it has too much carbon in it — she forgot to mention, pointed out Levant, that Californian oil is the heaviest oil on the continent. She has grandfathered — legally exempted — her own oil from California's low carbon fuel standards.
He also took aim at Greenpeace activists who he called cowards for only protesting the gentlest county. He added if they attempted to trespass and commit vandalism at an American energy installation post 9-11, as they have here, they would be shot. The same goes for China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
When they are jetting around the world for protests or flying over the oilsands, those aren't hand-gliders they are flying in, but fossil-fuelled planes, said Levant, noting these so-called environmentalists aren't living the creed.
"We should not let foreign lobbyists .... seize the moral high ground," he added. Levant said the oilsands needs to pump as much oil as possible into the world because it means less oil coming from the international rogue's gallery of producers.
He also put forth the idea of country of origin labelling similar to the Made in USA labelling currently on beef products. That way, every grassroots American can make a conscious choice at the pump: ethical oil from Canada or oil from competitors which are "terrorists, dictators, military abusers, misogynist and stoners of women."
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Author calls oilsands force for ‘national unity’
CAROL CHRISTIAN
"I love you."
It was with those three simple words that outspoken author Ezra Levant began his address Tuesday to a crowded luncheon jointly hosted by the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce and the Alberta Enterprise Group.
Levant, Calgary lawyer and former publisher of the Western Standard news magazine, was in town making the case for Alberta's oilsands which he discusses in his latest book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oilsands.
"You make me so proud to be a Canadian," he continued. "I love your industry. I love your work ethic. I love your charity. I love your respect for environmental stewardship. I love your innovation. I love your technology. I love your gentleness. I love how well you treat people. .... I love how you respect human rights."
At one point, he proclaimed "you are a force for national unity" because of the far-reaching national economic benefits of the oilsands.
He said it makes him "mad and pained and sad and outraged" to hear the insults and slanders "thrown at this town and at you."
Noting how critics like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton call it dirty oil even as she defends it, others call those here climate criminals.
"That's not just untrue, it's not just a lie .... but it's the opposite of the truth and those criticisms are immoral."
Levant came up with the idea for Ethical Oil while on a book tour promoting his last book Shakedown at a writer's festival in Ottawa. He was asked to participate in a discussion going on elsewhere in the building about the oilsands. His only prerequisite was that he was from Alberta.
He recalled seeing photos in the room of open pit mines which Levant calls "oilsands pornography because it's designed to be so shocking.
While he did his best to debate the issue of oilsands, he admitted his arguments weren't that good and those "well intentioned idealists" in the audience who had heard so many foul things about the oilsands, weren't asking grownup questions about if not the oilsands, then what?
Leaving with his speaking notes, Levant said he realized he had another book "and the phrase Ethical Oil sort of popped into my head, so I thought what makes us different?"
He told his audience Tuesday that if Fort McMurray produced one barrel of oil less, the world would be a less ethical place.
In his book, he doesn't compare Alberta oil production and development with other countries on the usual basis of numbers and dollars per se; it's more along the lines of what he calls four liberal values: environmental protection, human rights, economic justice and peace.
Because Alberta and Canada excel at those values more than any other oil producer in the world, "Alberta oil, Canadian oil is the most ethical oil in the world and indeed, we are the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry."
Some may say that's the wrong debate, noted Levant, saying instead their question is not whether the oilsands are better than OPEC, but are the oilsands better than some fantasy fuel of the future that hasn't been invented yet — a science fiction fuel like Star Trek's dilithium crystals or as per Avatar, unobtainium.
Debating oilsands versus Utopia is not a morally serious discussion, but one more suitable for a science fiction fan club.
Until that fantasy fuel is invented, that 1.4 million barrels from Canada sells to the U.S. displaces oil from other real countries, not science fiction countries, like Saudi Arabia, which until the oilsands came on stream, was the No. 1 source for fuel for the United States. If environmental activists and foreign lobbyists have their way and turn off the oilsands "do you think that for one second, 300 million Americans would not drive their cars? Do you think they would simply stop fuelling up their cars or maybe go to the gas pump and fuel it up with windmills or something?
"No one would be happier than the Saudi ambassador who would be there in a flash to make up their lost market share. And if you think America is thirsty for oil,well let me introduce you to China, India, Brazil and the rest of the developing world."
He noted that last year, for the first time ever, more cars were sold in China — 15.6 million — than in the United States.
If the oil stopped coming from the oilsands, the "world butchers" would make up that supply.
"And that's the morally serious comparison."
Oil does not come from neutral European countries like Switzerland, but the "world's bastards ... Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the world's dictators and bullies and terrorists.
"We are the only western Liberal democracy on that list," said Levant, referring to the remainder as the world's rogues.
"We Canadians invented peacekeeping. Saudi Arabia invented 9-11."
Describing Alberta oil as "conflict-free peace oil," he added that Canadian oil is also blood free from any form of genocide unlike up-and-coming oil producer, Sudan. Following the murder of 300,000 people of Darfur, Levant calculated 6.5 millilitres of blood in every barrel; the total derived from taking into account the number of victims and the amount blood in the average human body, and dividing that into the number of barrels exported from Sudan during the same period of time.
"So don't call oilsands oil blood oil. Don't you call us dirty oil. Don't you call us criminal oil because there really is blood oil ... or nuclear bombed oil by Iran or misogynistic terrorist dictatorship oil from Saudi Arabia. It is an unethical thing to shut down the oilsands because every barrel not from here is a barrel from the butchers."
With oils being categorized by different carbon contents, Levant pointed out that oils with a higher carbon footprint than oil from the oilsands are used in the U.S. In fact, he pointed out, there is an oil so heavy it has its own name: California heavy.
As California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, wags her finger at Alberta saying she doesn't want oil from the oilsands because it has too much carbon in it — she forgot to mention, pointed out Levant, that Californian oil is the heaviest oil on the continent. She has grandfathered — legally exempted — her own oil from California's low carbon fuel standards.
He also took aim at Greenpeace activists who he called cowards for only protesting the gentlest county. He added if they attempted to trespass and commit vandalism at an American energy installation post 9-11, as they have here, they would be shot. The same goes for China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
When they are jetting around the world for protests or flying over the oilsands, those aren't hand-gliders they are flying in, but fossil-fuelled planes, said Levant, noting these so-called environmentalists aren't living the creed.
"We should not let foreign lobbyists .... seize the moral high ground," he added. Levant said the oilsands needs to pump as much oil as possible into the world because it means less oil coming from the international rogue's gallery of producers.
He also put forth the idea of country of origin labelling similar to the Made in USA labelling currently on beef products. That way, every grassroots American can make a conscious choice at the pump: ethical oil from Canada or oil from competitors which are "terrorists, dictators, military abusers, misogynist and stoners of women."
[email protected]